Linux is struggling on the desktop because it only has a small number of "great" apps, according to the Gnome co-creator. Miguel de Icaza, co-creator of the Gnome desktop, told tech journalist Tim Anderson at the recent Windows 8 Build conference "When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10," de Icaza said, according to a post on Anderson's IT Writing blog. "You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We've managed to p*** off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time."

If I were stupid, I would have tested it with an accelerated video format. But since I'm not, I tested with universally unaccelerated WebM.
Why does it take 20% of a CPU core to project a video stream in X? It's not the constant % of CPU X uses, but the jump while playing video...
On Atom N270 with GMA950 anything in 720p and up is not even worth trying in Linux, while Windows manages to play 720p files, without any acceleration.

PS: Windows XP does not do it's graphics on the GPU. And I tested with Win7 and WinXP.